This is the first time I have read a Baldwin novel, I heard it was going to adapted into a movie and I was inspired to read it, if it’s being made into a movie it can’t be all bad, after all.

And it was fucking great.

At first, I thought it was going to be a Romeo and Juliet kind of love story, but it was much more than that. It was about family and the lengths the people who love you will go to protect you and ensure your happiness. Tish’s family’s dedication to her in the face of what they’re going through is admirable to say the least. And the love between Tish and Fonny is inspiring and heartbreaking at the same time. To have to endure separation when all you want to do is be with the person you love the most is frustrating.

Fonny’s family were the antithesis of the Rivers family, his mother and sisters saw him as something less than they were because he had spirit, so they belittled him. His father loved him, but for reasons I didn’t understand, he wouldn’t protect him from his mother and sisters.

My only issue was Fonny, he was overtly masculine and covertly sensitive, but after thinking on it, that is how men behave, even today.